The question of the origins of the ancient civilizations of the Americas has long been debated. That settlers of the Americas came across a Bering Strait land bridge is accepted by most modern scholars; but questions remain about what sort of cultural baggage they brought with them, how much of American culture was imported and how much developed in the Americas, and the length and pattern of migrations.
In Origins of Pre-Columbian Art, Terence Grieder speaks to these questions. Using archaeological and ethnological evidence of traits shared by cultures around the Pacific Basin, he posits that the wider the spread and the greater the distance from the source, the more ancient the traits should be. He proposes three basic waves of migration, using a set of traits to define each wave.
As traits of the First Wave, he cites the use of cup and groove markings (vulva and phallus) in stone, the bullroarer (earth spirits), white feather down (semen), and face and body painting (“attracting the beneficent and warding off the malign”), positing great antiquity for these because of their wide distribution.
Whereas the First Wave emphasized the earth and fertility, Second Wave iconography was marked by “emphasis on the regions above the ground … The tree or pole, with its phallic and axial connotations, became the focus of Second Wave religious philosophy,” leading to awareness of the celestial realm at the top. The Second Wave was typified by consciousness of the spirit in things above the earth rather than in it. Material traits included paper and wooden masks—tree products.
“The key to Third Wave symbolism is astronomy-astrology,” when the movements of the heavens became perhaps more important than those of the earth, and orderly systems were developed for understanding and recording celestial phenomena. Old graphic signs like the circle were given new meaning as cosmological symbols, and new signs like the swastika were invented.
Those who have worked with these symbols will undoubtedly have quibbles—with designations of categories, meaning shifts, and so forth— and the material perhaps does not always fit perfectly; but this does not detract from the worth of the book. It is an admirable proposal on an important subject.
There is, moreover, another, more philosophical, level in this book: it concerns the attempt to understand basic questions of how things happen, how cultures and cosmology evolve, how man makes and uses symbols, and how we read evidence for these processes.
On both levels, it is a stimulating book.
